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arXiv:1508.05334 · Physical Review Applied

Tamper-Indicating Quantum Seal

Brian P. Williams, Keith A. Britt, Travis S. Humble

Published Jan 4, 2016• 31 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Verifying the integrity of a tamper-indicating seal is crucial in surveillance and containment technologies, as an intruder may try to hide a breach. Seals based on the no-cloning principle of quantum mechanics offer an unprecedented level of security. By monitoring the entanglement of transmitted photon pairs, the authors detect intrusion attempts with 99.99% probability, and just a 10${}^{-9}$ chance for a false alarm. In contrast, any conventional optical system would fail this test completely.

DOI
10.1103/physrevapplied.5.014001

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We report on our development of the fiber-optic quantum seal (FOQS) which will provide highsensitivity detection capabilities for tamper events at bulk storage facilities to enhance safeguards verification efforts.Long-term verification of critical assets in storage facilities for the containment and surveillance mission area must provide material accountancy with assurance of security and continuity of knowledge.As a part of this effort, future monitoring systems may incorporate networked sensors to perform status checks on individual or collection of containers.FOQC enhances current practices by making use of quantum optical probes to enable channel integrity checks and sensor data authentication.Encoded light pulses in the fiber channels will monitor for intrusions while decoding of these pulses will provide data authentication.FOQS consists of an interferometric quantum transceiver which transmits randomly encoded packets of photons over a fiber loop used to seal a container.These photon packets return to the receiver to be decoded for amplitude and phase information.Comparisons of the transmit and receive signals allow for the characterization of the channel.If the comparison shows high degree of correlation, channel integrity and authentication are deemed true, while a lack of correlation triggers an intrusion alarm.The key advantage that FOQS has is that the quantum probes are governed by the uncertainty principle which prevents the intruder from attacking the channel without leaving a trace.This trace will be used to detect the attack attempt.Experimental work will be discussed for the seal development, and theoretical analysis for enhanced security will be presented in the hypothesis-test framework.

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Verifying the integrity of a tamper-indicating seal is crucial in surveillance and containment technologies, as an intruder may try to hide a breach. Seals based on the no-cloning principle of quantum mechanics offer an unprecedented level of security. By monitoring the entanglement of transmitted photon pairs, the authors detect intrusion attempts with 99.99% probability, and just a 10−9{}^{-9}−9 chance for a false alarm. In contrast, any conventional optical system would fail this test completely.
We describe the use of quantum-mechanically entangled photons for sensing intrusions across a physical perimeter. Our approach to intrusion detection uses the no-cloning principle of quantum information science as protection against an intruder’s ability to spoof a sensor receiver using a ‘classical ’ intercept-resend attack. We explore the bounds on detection using quantum detection and estimation theory, and we experimentally demonstrate the underlying principle of entanglement-based detection using the visibility derived from polarization-correlation measurements.
Quantum mechanics values highly its sovereignty and does not allow extraneous intrusions. In quantum mechanics processing we can only observe the input state and the output state. Attempts to intrude, or to ‘peek in between,’ are always successfully detected. This is the essence behind quantum cryptography and the principle of what provides robust security to quantum communications in general. Here we focus on quantum entanglement based cryptography. This methodology puts to work Bell's theorem to verify that no external intrusion has occurred. We also describe a more stringent all-quantum protocol entirely based on a measurements strategy. The chapter concludes with a description of the N -slit interferometric communications approach that reinforces understanding of the concepts that bring unprecedented security to quantum communications.
We report on our development of the fiber-optic quantum seal (FOQS) which will provide highsensitivity detection capabilities for tamper events at bulk storage facilities to enhance safeguards verification efforts.Long-term verification of critical assets in storage facilities for the containment and surveillance mission area must provide material accountancy with assurance of security and continuity of knowledge.As a part of this effort, future monitoring systems may incorporate networked sensors to perform status checks on individual or collection of containers.FOQC enhances current practices by making use of quantum optical probes to enable channel integrity checks and sensor data authentication.Encoded light pulses in the fiber channels will monitor for intrusions while decoding of these pulses will provide data authentication.FOQS consists of an interferometric quantum transceiver which transmits randomly encoded packets of photons over a fiber loop used to seal a container.These photon packets return to the receiver to be decoded for amplitude and phase information.Comparisons of the transmit and receive signals allow for the characterization of the channel.If the comparison shows high degree of correlation, channel integrity and authentication are deemed true, while a lack of correlation triggers an intrusion alarm.The key advantage that FOQS has is that the quantum probes are governed by the uncertainty principle which prevents the intruder from attacking the channel without leaving a trace.This trace will be used to detect the attack attempt.Experimental work will be discussed for the seal development, and theoretical analysis for enhanced security will be presented in the hypothesis-test framework.